


You don't have to melt my heart to win it

by unnieunnie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Dragons, Even mages have to pay rent, M/M, Mages, Magic-Users, teacups
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-27
Updated: 2020-01-27
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:40:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21554020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unnieunnie/pseuds/unnieunnie
Summary: Fresh out of 3 years living like a monk brand-new Ice Mage Minseok is just glad to be back with his friends. He's not at all interested in all the rumors about a dragon hiding in town.He is, however, really interested in the new tavern-keeper, Jongdae.
Relationships: Kim Jongdae | Chen/Kim Minseok | Xiumin
Comments: 43
Kudos: 411
Collections: EXZOO : Third Round





	You don't have to melt my heart to win it

**Author's Note:**

> For prompt S016: Dragons are among the rarest and most powerful of magical creatures. Every magic-user is always on the hunt for one. Too bad people never seem to remember that even dragons can come in small packages 
> 
> The problem is: this was MY PROMPT! I had to write it MYSELF! Does that seem fair to you??
> 
> (I'm just kidding, I hope you have half as much fun reading as I did writing it.)
> 
> XXXXXXXXXX

Minseok stepped out of the great ice doors of the Abbey of the Seven Glaciers, then turned to bow at the abbot and assembled monks one last time before he left. He watched the doors close and sighed.

It still didn’t seem real, that he had passed all the tests and was now a fully fledged ice mage. Six years at the Academy, another 3 up here at the Abbey, the last of which he’d spent in total silence except for the past couple of days, after he passed all his trials and received his robe and locket. Even then, the only words spoken to him had been prayers and brief congratulations, and the only words he had spoken were his vow to serve the light and brief thanks. He still startled every time he saw his hands, now marked with swirls of bluish constellations, like ice crystals in the wind.

He hadn’t been around a mirror since before he came up the mountain, but he knew that ice mages’ hair turned white. So that would be weird.

His friends were waiting for him at the funicular station at the bottom of the mountain – and that would be weird too, to see them after so much time. Even riding down in the somewhat-heated car seemed like a ridiculous luxury. Minseok had been required to climb the mountain to be granted entry to the Abbey, including scaling a nearly-sheer cliff face of pure ice. He had lived in an unheated room, with warm food only on holidays.

Even among magic users with an affinity for cold or water, not many were interested in 3 years of living like a monk on top of a mountain and going through the trials. He’d gotten used to silence, cold, and being alone. As much as he had missed his friends, Minseok was a little nervous to re-enter their world.

They were impossible to miss on the platform: Junmyeon’s quiet, handsome face atop his beautifully tailored suit in shades of blue with more of a greenish tint than Minseok’s own blue, grey, and white robes; Jongin, wearing something complicated and flattering in grey and black that made him look more like a walking advertisement than a magic-user; and Chanyeol, the tallest of the bunch, in his crimson robes, charcoal hair springing off the top of his head, face marked by the flames and his irises limned in red.

And of course, as the fiery, impulsive one, Channie was the first to embrace him.

“Min!” Chanyeol yelled. “Wow, look at you! How were you gone for three whole years? And now you come back looking even handsomer than ever, who said that was okay?”

Minseok laughed and put his arms around his badly-missed friend, despite the noise and heat of him, and the way that their magics chafed against one another. Jongin was quieter, but as an aether-user, he felt nebulous in Minseok’s grasp.

“We missed you,” Nini said in his soft, deep voice. “You look so different, but you’re still our Min.”

Junmyeon’s water magic felt comfortable and familiar when they hugged. Jun with his fancy family and his fancy suit. Minseok smiled against his shoulder. They’d have been partners, in another life, if Jun had been just a bit less filial and Minseok moderately less stubborn. But it was enough to be friends, and to feel his ice bathed in the flow of Junmyeon’s water.

“Your room’s all ready,” Jun said. “We’re all so glad you’re back.”

“You didn’t have to take up new lodgings just to make room for me,” Minseok said, his voice hoarse with lack of practice.

“We wanted to,” Jongin said. “We’ve missed you a lot! And there’s so much to catch up on, you don’t even know.”

“Mostly about Jongdae,” Chanyeol said, in the kind of voice he usually reserved for talking about baby animals.

Junmyeon and Jongin both sighed, wearing almost identical sappy grins.

“Mostly about Jongdae,” Jongin said.

Jongdae, as Minseok learned on the carriage ride to their lodgings, owned a tavern: the most comfortable, enjoyable tavern in the city, with the most delicious food and the most refreshing drinks imaginable.

“And he’s incredibly engaging,” Junmyeon said. “I feel like I’ve had more insights into my own magic just from talking to him the past few months than I learned my whole time at the Academy. There’s something about the way he listens with his whole attention that just makes me feel smarter.”

“And he’s so handsome, Min, I had to stop being shy the first time he smiled at me. Once I traveled all the way to the Spine Mountains and back without shredding my soul at all, and I’m convinced that it was because I just felt so comfortable and confident after talking to him.”

“Talking to him,” Chanyeol said, sounding sour.

Jongin’s cheeks flushed dark, and Minseok felt one eyebrow lift.

“There was talking,” Jongin said. “In there among the kissing.”

Chanyeol sighed.

“He’s a _great_ kisser,” he said. “I set half the block on fire. He must have terrific wards or something, though, because the flames went out before there was hardly any damage at all.”

Minseok leaned against the side of the carriage and smiled at Junmyeon. Some things hadn’t changed since the Academy, at least: Chanyeol and Jongin were still wearing their hearts on their sleeves. He used to join them, back in their school days. But after 3 years where the only touch of another person’s hand had been healers for his occasional frostbite at the beginning, Minseok no longer had any interest in such games. He wondered whether he had become like Jun, who was affectionate and dependable and never once interested in getting naked with anyone else.

“We thought we’d take you to the Scale and Claw for dinner, actually,” Jun said. “The food really is wonderful, and it’s a celebratory kind of place. As long as you don’t mind all their gross mooning over the proprietor.”

He gestured toward Chan and Nini, who scowled at him.

“If you don’t mind making it an early evening. I’m not used to company or conversation anymore,” Minseok said.

All the rambunctiousness in the carriage faded, and Minseok suddenly felt warmer than he had in years, looking at the fond smiles of his friends. He’d forgotten that feeling.

“Would you rather just go home?” Jongin said. “Yeollie’s actually a decent cook now, we can definitely have a quiet night.”

“No, I need to get used to people again,” Minseok said, waving at Jun and Chanyeol’s nods.

Minseok swung down out of the carriage into a street he probably could still find with his eyes closed. He _had_ found it – or rather, found his way back home from it – with his eyes closed numerous times, when the ale and spirits he’d drunk weighed too heavily on his eyelids. Before Minseok had left for the Abbey, the Scale and Claw had been His Majesty’s Wheelbarrow: the seedy little bar where they’d spent most of their free time during their upper years at the Academy.

Minseok glared into his friends’ grinning faces.

“It’s much cleaner now,” Junmyeon said.

“No more leaks in the roof,” Jongin said.

“The food doesn’t give you the shits,” Chanyeol said.

“Fine,” he sighed.

The Barrow had been dimly lit enough to hide its alarming lack of hygiene and had smelled like something had died in the back corner and they'd tried to cover the smell with old beer.

Minseok wouldn’t have recognized the place had he not seen it from the outside. He had honestly thought the “windows” in the Barrow were fake, but now late-afternoon sunlight streamed through them, illuminating a room full of polished wood and dark green paint, with forest scenes on the walls and a fire popping in a huge hearth. It smelled of spices and citrus, and as he stepped forward, Minseok’s boots didn’t stick to the floor at all.

It was a minor miracle.

“Amazing, right?” Chanyeol asked, sweeping his arm around.

Minseok nodded, his eye following Chanyeol’s hand and marveling at how clean and cozy everything looked. He found himself laughing with disbelief as his friends pointed out the sites of drunken past escapades, now bright and welcoming.

The only things out of place were the narrow shelves running around the room, just above a comfortable height for himself, but at regular intervals up to the ceiling. They were crammed with teacups: most of them with saucers, with lots of swirly gilt handles. Amid the paneling and the artwork, they seemed incongruously delicate. Even had the rest of the décor matched, the sheer number of them was odd and a little ridiculous.

It was all so diverting that Minseok didn’t feel the stranger approach until he was right behind them. He did notice how all of his friends sighed simultaneously. Minseok turned to see.

The man was no larger in stature than Minseok himself, topping out around Chanyeol and Jongin’s shoulders. But he had a presence far larger – a personal energy that made Minseok curious as to whether he was a magic-user in his own right, and if so, what his element might be. He had the pale skin of water users, but the black eyes of aether. His face was one of strong angles and symmetry. He was dressed like a tavern-keeper, though: leather apron over a linen shirt and dark trousers, sturdy low boots.

“Jongdae,” Chanyeol said.

Minseok watched the way Chanyeol’s cheeks flushed when Jongdae ran one hand down his bicep, the way Junmyeon reached to grasp his hand, and Jongin leaned over to press their cheeks together. Chanyeol shook himself, and made introductions. Under the focus of Jongdae's fathomless eyes, Minseok was reminded of several large glacier-demons he had tangled with during his trials in recent days. It was a bit disorienting, coming from a man Minseok’s own size.

Jongdae bowed. His face seemed to naturally carry a smile about it, but Minseok fancied that he saw friendliness in Jongdae’s expression.

And it was a relief to return his bow and not have to touch hands with a stranger.

“Welcome,” Jongdae said. “Your friends have spoken so much of you that I feel as if I’ve been waiting for you too. Congratulations on winning your trials, mage.”

“Thank you,” Minseok said, blinking through his surprise.

Jongdae clapped his hands.

“You won’t get your usual table tonight, pets. Your Minseok will be months acclimating to life off the glacier, so for tonight, it’s the coldest, draftiest corner for you.”

Chanyeol grumbled. Junmyeon took Minseok’s arm.

“Isn’t he wonderful?” Jun murmured.

He certainly was _something_. Minseok took the advice of the chair farthest back in the corner (not only closest to the draft but also protected at the back, which was a comfort to the frazzled nerves of those recently trialed) and watched Jongdae saunter away from them. He stopped at nearly every table – nearly every table called for him, and though he didn’t spend long at any of them, there was no sense of hurry about his stops, nor did his smile ever dim. There were clasped hands and kissed cheeks a-plenty.

“Is he a magic-user?”

Chanyeol laughed aloud.

“That didn’t take long!”

In younger days, Minseok would’ve protested, and it likely would’ve turned into a wrestling match on this very floor. Now, though, Minseok merely frowned and sat back in his chair.

“I don’t think so,” Junmyeon said finally. “Though there is something about him, isn’t there? None of us have been able to figure it out.”

After a bit more conversation, Minseok touched the back of Chanyeol’s hand by way of apology and was gratified by a brief hand clasp of forgiveness.

A dryad barmaid brought a tray of drinks and greeted Minseok’s companions like old friends.

“You must be the ice mage,” she said, nodding at him. “Boss said this is for you.”

She set a crystal cup in front of him, and Minseok smiled at the scent of the drink made from snowfoil leaves that was served at the Abbey only at the arrival of a new monk or mage-applicant.

How in the world?

“That looks cold,” Chanyeol said.

“It’ll be solid ice in five minutes if I don’t drink it,” Minseok said, and gulped it down while Chanyeol shuddered and wrapped his hands around the steaming mug in front of him.

His friends knew well what kinds of questions it was acceptable to ask, and Jun’s watery empathy let him see when Minseok began to tire of being the focus of attention and turn the conversation to their own lives in the preceding 3 years: their work and their studies, the conquests and defeats of their hearts.

Minseok had had to stuff loneliness down during his years at the Abbey, and it felt strange to be lonely for his friends now, sitting in front of them while they laughed. He looked up to see Jongdae behind the bar, staring over at them. When he caught Minseok’s eye, Jongdae gave a small, close-lipped smile and bowed his head. The gesture made Minseok feel better.

“But mostly what we all talk about these days is the dragon,” Jongin said.

“Dragon?”

Minseok was out of touch with news, after his time in the Abbey, but even he knew the world hadn’t seen a new dragon since he’d been a child. They lived in their own realm, which was either in a different dimension or on the moon, depending on which philosopher one felt had the strongest argument, and came to the world on their own terms. Legend had it that they came to the world when they wanted companionship. The last one Minseok knew of, from his youth, had settled near the sea on the western continent, and her companion was now emperor of that hemisphere. Every mage or magic-user wanted a friend/lover/familiar who was a magical being – if you had the right resonance, they could do wonders for one’s abilities.

Dragons, however, could resonate with anybody they wanted to.

“Is it real?” Minseok asked.

“Oh yes,” Junmyeon said. “You know my scrying skills are crap, and even I get a strong hit on there being a dragon in town if I prepare properly.”

Minseok whistled. Jun _was_ terrible at any kind of prognostication.

“Whoever they are, they’re determined to hide,” Jongin said. “And if they’re doing such a good job, they can’t be a nestling.”

An adult dragon, in the fullness of their power. Minseok shook his head.

That conversation took up the rest of their meal: a delicious meal, with more meat in it than Minseok had eaten since the night of his graduation from the Academy. They got rather merry, also over more alcohol than Minseok was used to, and he found himself the next morning awaking in an unfamiliar room with no knowledge of how he got there, comforted only by the sight of his own robes and bag, with a pounding head, a roiling belly, and a double fistful of regret.

He laid one hand on his locket and breathed down into his gifts: the steadiness of the whale-spirit who had lived in the glacier since it was an ocean, the chill of the ice itself, and the speed of the great snow-wolf whom he had chased for a month and had to pin to the ice with his bare hands before she would give up her knowledge. These sped his metabolism, eased his headache, and calmed his guts, leaving him tired and hungry but at least no longer hungover.

Minseok put on as few clothes as he dared, followed the scent of food and the sounds of cooking to the other end of the hallway outside his room, and found Chanyeol, bundled up in robes, in front of a cookstove.

“Min. Still on Abbey time, I see,” Chanyeol said.

“I was practically on Abbey time before I climbed the mountain,” Minseok said, and Chanyeol smiled.

“And Nini and Jun still prefer to sleep the morning away. Some things don’t change, at least.”

Chanyeol sounded wistful as he said it, and he reached out to touch Minseok’s hair. Minseok still hadn’t properly looked in a mirror yet.

“Is it very odd?”

Of course, when Minseok had climbed the mountain, Chanyeol’s hair and eyes had still been brown, and there hadn’t been any ash-colored streaks forking over his cheekbones.

“Let’s see,” Chanyeol said, gesturing.

Minseok pulled his shirt over his head, spread his arms, and turned slowly. Chanyeol was smiling when Minseok completed his circle.

“Don’t tell Jun I said this, but you were always the handsomest of all of us,” Chanyeol said.

Minseok rolled his eyes.

“Jongin doesn’t count, aether-users are practically magical beings.”

Minseok laughed. He was still out of practice – laughing felt strange.

“You look like an ice mage,” Chanyeol said. “Which means that you look like yourself. The coloring’s a bit weird, but so’s mine. You wear it well, Min.”

“Thanks, Yeollie.”

Chanyeol grinned.

“Want to see my marks?”

Junmyeon found them in the kitchen later, both shirtless, comparing the overall patterns of Chanyeol’s ashy flame trails and Minseok’s blue swirls of ice crystals.

“Are you trying to ruin my breakfast or my self-esteem?” he asked from the doorway.

“Oh damn, breakfast!” Chanyeol shouted, rushing back to the cooktop and stirring while he pulled his robes back on with one hand.

“Cold porridge is in the ice box, Min. And Junie bought some of that frostberry jam.”

“In case you still like it,” Junmyeon said.

“I haven’t had it in three years, but I imagine I still do, thanks Jun.”

“It’ll be nice not to have to buy ice, anyhow,” Junmyeon said.

Minseok remembered how he’d had to choke down cold porridge his first few months at the Abbey. Now it was a comfort equal to sitting with his friends around their small table, letting their faces become familiar again. Even the sweetness of the jam felt like a gift.

“Is your room comfortable, Min? There’s plenty of space in the cellar if you need more cold, but I didn’t want to stick you down in the dark unless you really wanted it.”

“Isn’t he nice? I’m in the attic where I can roast as much as I want,” Chanyeol said.

“It’s just fine, I can ward it to be cooler, thank you.”

Jongin dragged himself in before breakfast was over, yawning like a bear just out of hibernation to shovel some of Chanyeol’s fried noodles in his mouth before they scattered to their work: Junmyeon to the municipal services department, where he worked on the water system, of course, Jongin to the mail office, and Chanyeol to the factory sector on the outskirts of town.

Minseok sighed into the quiet of their absence as he washed the dishes.

He was glad of them, glad to have a place to live while he re-acclimated to life in the city. He would go, as Chanyeol had, to the city council and present himself, see what use they might make of a newly minted ice mage. If the work seemed interesting, perhaps he’d stay and make a life with them.

If not, there was always the Abbey to return to and all the secrets yet to learn, the monsters to be kept at bay.

In the meantime, he unpacked his small bag into the dresser in his room and set wards to keep it at a cooler temperature. He explored the small house, from dank cellar to Chanyeol’s bright, warm attic. Finding Junmyeon’s bedroom door open, Minseok slipped inside to the mirror he knew would be there.

Well, he had cheekbones now, to go with the rest of it. His internal image of himself was still of a man new to adulthood, black-haired and dark-eyed, soft around the mouth. He’d always been pale, but his skin was the almost blue-white of snow now, marked by those blue swirls all over, which still made him startle every time he saw his arms move. Minseok wondered what it would be like if he let his white hair grow out long enough to fall over his eyes, so he could see it. He wondered whether he’d ever get used to looking at himself and seeing eyes the green-tinged blue of cave ice.

He wondered whether his expression would remain so wary, over time.

The visit to the city council wasn’t promising. Ice mages were rare: magic users were not. Minseok received plenty of congratulations and comments about his dedication and fortitude. Three different people asked him out. The mayor shook his hand, and the Wizard of the City bowed to him.

“I’m not sure we have anything interesting for an ice mage,” the wizard, Huang Zitao, said. “Unless you’re interested in tracking the dragon.”

“The dragon’s real?”

Zitao stopped to gaze at him. He was a tall, slender man, dramatic in both jewelry and clothing, and the expression on his narrow face was wry.

“The dragon is most certainly real, and most certainly determined to hide until they decide to show themselves. It’s incredibly vexing, each day more magic-users show up, wanting municipal jobs so they can draw city paychecks to do nothing but wander around with scrying crystals, hoping to find the dragon and set themselves up as emperor.”

The wizard sighed.

“For one thing, it’s insulting to the intelligence of a powerful, ancient magical being. For another, I’m afraid it means we have absolutely no tasks left interesting enough to be deserving of someone with your training and abilities, my friend.”

Minseok couldn’t help but grin. At the Abbey he’d scrubbed plenty of floors and compressed many, many bundles of garbage into small, weighty pellets that could be dropped into a crevasse. He didn’t look forward to such work again, but honesty was better than flattery.

Glut of magic users there may have been, but ice mages were thin on the ground, so Minseok turned out to have his choice of working in the city warehouses to keep perishables fresh or traveling around to the various businesses and rich houses to renew ice screens and cold wards. Neither was the least bit interesting, but at least the latter meant a change of scenery, and he signed up to work backup for the former, in case he needed a change of pace.

“The glories of the mage’s life,” Zitao said.

Minseok shrugged.

“If I long for glory, I can always go back to the glacier and chase down ice demons to make them give up their power,” he said.

The wizard laughed.

“Before you do so, please come over for tea. We can talk theory and grouse about how the average hedge-witch doesn’t understand the deep spiritual wounds we self-inflicted by going through the trials.”

“One of my close friends is a fire mage, shall I bring him too?”

“Please do, complaint is always more enjoyable in a crowd.”

So Minseok had work, if not interesting work, and the promise of an entertaining new acquaintance. He counted it a successful morning, which deserved a celebratory lunch. And since the only place he knew in town was the Scale & Claw, it might as well be there.

He was surprised to find it empty, though a fire crackled in the hearth, and he could hear clanking in the kitchen. The hundreds of teacups lining the walls were no less disconcerting (ridiculous) upon a second look.

“Hello,” a voice said behind him.

Even as Minseok’s brain too-slowly told him that the voice belonged to Jongdae, his body moved of its own volition, heart pounding. He swept his robes aside as he pivoted on one foot. He reached down into himself, and his hands, angled in front of him, crackled with frost.

“I do beg your pardon,” Jongdae said, grinning and not sounding the least bit sorry.

Minseok stood up out of his fighting crouch and shook the frost off his hands.

His long-dormant sense of social mores demanded that he say something, but his unpracticed mouth wouldn’t cooperate. The mischief softened out of Jongdae’s smile.

“I _am_ sorry,” Jongdae said. “I should remember that you have known neither safety nor comfort in some time. Please come sit, friend, and let me make it up to you with some lunch.”

Minseok nodded and took a seat at the bar. He was happy to wrap his hands around the plain glass of cool water that Jongdae set in front of him.

“Did you come down off the mountain yesterday?” Jongdae asked.

“Yes.”

Jongdae shook his head, a smile still hovering about his mouth.

“So if you came down yesterday, then the day before that you spent half in meditation before you received your locket, likely spent the day before that asleep, and before that, had nothing but privation and danger for the better part of a year.”

It was correct. How anyone neither a mage nor a monk could know all of that, Minseok couldn’t imagine. He could only blink his surprise.

“And then I went and let your friends ply you with rich food and liquor last night. No wonder you look a little ragged around the edges today.”

Did he? What a shame, and he’d gone to the council looking that way? Minseok looked down and tugged at his robes. They were new ones, to replace the ones worn through during his trials, he’d assumed they looked all right.

“Don’t fret,” Jongdae said. “Here, entertain yourself while I get your lunch.”

Minseok sipped his water and flipped through the newspapers Jongdae had slid across the bar. The world off the glacier seemed so busy – trade negotiations and far-off wars, an epidemic in the southern desert. One of the papers was a flimsy little rag so cheaply printed that it left ink on his fingers, entirely taken up with the question of the dragon in town, the prevailing theories of where it might be, and how it could be discovered.

“The dragon!” Jongdae laughed. “It’s all anyone ever wants to talk about these days. Please don’t tell me you’re going to get caught up in the great hunt.”

He set several bowls in front of Minseok: a colorful pile of shredded vegetables in a pinkish sauce, what looked like chilled boiled icewort, and noodles in broth. Minseok touched all the bowls and found them to be cold. His surprise and relief took the form of a smile.

“Oh no, I’ve got to work, and to relearn how to live among people who speak regularly, I’ll be far too busy to try to suss out a magical being who doesn’t wish to be found,” he said.

Not to mention which, most of the dragons he’d ever heard of had been of air or fire elements and wouldn’t be interested in working with an ice mage, anyway.

He didn’t feel uncomfortable speaking to Jongdae, whose questions were light and easy, to go with his light and easy meal, plain enough to show up on the tables at the Abbey and soothing as meltwater.

“Renewing wards and ice screens!” Jongdae sneered. “An ice mage with your au- … obvious training and qualifications? It’s insulting.”

Minseok shrugged.

“It’ll put money in my pocket until I determine what I want to do with myself,” he said. “And while I wait for all the dragon-hunters to get bored and leave town.”

Jongdae rolled his eyes, then rubbed at the teacup he’d spent the past 20 minutes polishing. His expression looked almost shy.

“You aren’t – among those humans who feel other beings to be lesser, are you?”

“Indeed not,” Minseok said. “I doubt any mage could think humans superior to those whose knowledge we have to earn during our trials.”

“Ah yes, of course. How is old Samilien these days?”

Minseok dropped his spoon. He had never expected to hear that name from anyone other than the whale-spirit of the glacier herself. He had only learned it at the end of his time with her, weeks spent traveling with her outside his body through the underground rivers that led to the top of the world.

“Much as she ever was, I suppose,” he croaked. “How?”

Jongdae winked.

“I’m very well-traveled,” he said. “Also somewhat older than I look.”

Confronted with the mixture of mind-boggling knowledge and potential flirting, Minseok found himself with not a single word to say.

“Anyway,” Jongdae said briskly while he stacked Minseok’s dishes, “I’ve a friend doing some agricultural experiments that involve cold water, and he’s having a devil of a time with his equipment. Maybe you’d be willing to speak with him?”

“Yes, of course.”

Jongdae’s smile was broad and sly.

“Excellent. I can’t tell ahead of time which day he might be free, so the easiest way to meet him will be to come here for lunch every day. I hope that’s all right.”

Minseok narrowed his eyes and was met by a wide grin.

Well, even if it was flirtation, he still needed to eat. And it was hardly a burden to be flirted with by a handsome tavern-keeper with an easy manner.

At work, Minseok spent the next several days taking tea in a variety of upscale parlors or standing in offices listening to inaccurate descriptions of how to do his own job. In two cases he was also quizzed about his marital status.

Renewing wards or ice screens was work he could do without any thought whatsoever, but the population of ice mages had always been small, so the wards and screens were old and depleted, leaving him depleted as well. He dragged himself to the Scale & Claw each midday and home each evening. Each of them in their own way renewed him.

Minseok had known his friends for nearly half his life, but to meet them again after a long absence reminded him of why they’d become close in the first place. To do so when they were all grown and masters of their own fates was an even greater pleasure. Chanyeol was in fact a fine cook, and it was a joy to work and chat with him in the small kitchen of their house, even if they had opposing ideas about the temperature of a satisfying meal. Jongin, long the shyest of them all, was more settled into himself than he had been as a student, quietly following after his housemates to take care of them in a hundred small ways. Junmyeon fretted and fussed over them all like the mother hen he was, and Minseok fell back into the dynamic with gratitude.

By contrast, his visits to the Scale & Claw left him buzzing with energy. It would’ve been enough to keep him going back that the meals were reminiscent of those at the Abbey, but each day, the brightness of Jongdae’s smile when Minseok walked through the door lifted the burdens of the morning. Jongdae always wanted to know about Minseok’s wanderings around town (and had wry comments about nosy matrons with unmarried children), and he always had lively stories about the previous evening’s customers while he rubbed teacups with a soft cloth.

Jongdae didn’t push him, even if his questions surprised Minseok regularly with the suggestion of deep magical knowledge. Minseok found himself intrigued as well as attracted – the man’s wit and mystery were as appealing as his angular handsomeness. That they had never once touched each other added to the intrigue. Minseok tried to tell himself to prepare for Jongdae having no magic, that if they joined hands it would be simple skin against skin, with its own pleasures.

He figured he could ask any of his roommates about that topic, but he found he didn’t really want to know any more about Jongdae kissing Chanyeol and Jongin or snuggling up to Junmyeon. Silly as he knew it to be, the thought made a sour taste in his mouth.

After 5 days, on the day before week’s end, Minseok stumbled into the Scale & Claw after a morning spent failing to renew an ancient ice screen in the city’s oldest, most decrepit hospital, which served the poorest of humans and magical beings on half a bootlace and a triple serving of prayer. They didn’t have enough money to pay for more than the pathetic improvement he’d been able to put into the thing over the course of his morning, but Minseok hated to leave the job unfinished.

A small, dark figure sat next to his accustomed spot at the bar.

“Minseok! Meet my friend Kyungsoo.”

Minseok took the outstretched hand, no matter how unlikely it might be that a gnome’s earth energy would resonate with his ice. No magic user would pass up the slimmest chance.

And, in fact, Kyungsoo’s magic didn’t make any internal bells ring, although it was a calm sort of magic that Minseok immediately liked – as he did the gnome’s large, expressive eyes and warm voice. Jongdae beamed at them (really, a highly distracting sort of smile) and fed them while Kyungsoo described his agricultural scheme.

“That sounds great,” Yeri, the dryad barmaid, said after several minutes of obvious listening in. “I love it when my feet are cold but my head’s hot, it always makes me feel like I could go straight into bud.”

Jongdae grinned at the way Minseok and Kyungsoo both required a cleared throat and a sip of water after that comment. Yeri snickered and moved away.

“Anyway,” Kyungsoo said, “it’s much easier to produce above-ground heat than it is below-ground cold at the shallow depths I need.”

It was all much more interesting than shoring up the cold wards in the wine cellars of the rich. Minseok and Kyungsoo agreed to meet again at the Scale & Claw on the seventh day and go out to Kyungoo’s farm to talk more.

Jongdae looked remarkably pleased with himself.

“He seems nice,” Minseok said once Kyungsoo had left.

“Isn’t he great? I’ve never understood why people don’t agree that the earth-aligned should be growing our food, who better? Everyone has such a narrow-minded view of magical beings, it makes me furious.”

Minseok found himself with his chin on his fist while he listened to that impassioned little speech. He was afraid he probably also had a dopey expression on his face.

“I’ve never thought about it that way, but of course you’re right,” he said. ”I’ve met very few gnomes, but I thoroughly enjoyed that conversation.”

“Good,” Jongdae said warmly.

The enthusiasm in his tone gave Minseok pause. And, he was unsurprised to note, a little disappointment.

“Um. We didn’t – resonate. If that was the purpose of introducing us.”

Minseok couldn’t decide whether he was more gratified by Jongdae’s horrified expression or the redness of his face.

“Oh no! No, not at all!”

Still, he found himself back at the Scale & Claw that evening with his friends, back in the drafty corner, laughing. Every other cup that Yeri brought him was plain water, and more than once Minseok looked up to see Jongdae watching them with a smile. Minseok carried Junmyeon home on his back and woke in the morning to a quiet house, running through his exercises in the nice, cool cellar so his hungover housemates could sleep.

If this was to be how his life would go for the foreseeable future, Minseok counted himself satisfied.

On the assumption that at some point his flirtation with Jongdae might move forward a bit.

Minseok took Chanyeol with him on the seventh day, the gnome’s planting scheme also involving heat, after all. It was the first time he’d ever seen a moment of resonance happen in front of him. But the minute Chanyeol shook Kyungsoo’s hand, his fire flared enough that Minseok felt physically warm, then collapsed back down into something hot and steady as banked coals. Meanwhile, the floorboard under Kyungsoo’s feet cracked.

“Oh,” Chanyeol said, and grinned widely.

“Guess I’ll be saving money on firewood,” Kyungsoo said.

He looked serious when he said it, but only a couple of seconds later, he and Chanyeol both laughed. Their hands were still clasped.

“Should’ve seen that coming,” Jongdae muttered.

Minseok found himself with a free afternoon, since Chanyeol and Kyungsoo needed to talk over their respective opinions about magical working and get to know one another, to see whether their personalities meshed like their magic did. Jongdae cocked one eyebrow; Minseok shrugged and climbed onto his accustomed stool.

It was a pleasant day: Jongdae egged him into telling stories of his and Chanyeol’s exploits in school. Jongdae stood behind the bar polishing teacups and talked enough about Kyungsoo that Minseok felt sure his friend would have an excellent magical partnership ahead of him, then sent Minseok into gales of laughter talking about his friends and their awkward flirtations. All of it was extremely funny without being mean, and without any details.

“You certainly have them wrapped around your wrist,” Minseok said.

“Well, you know. I can be very affectionate with my regulars.”

Minseok would’ve recoiled from that, with stung feelings and confusion, except for the way Jongdae stood still, his black eyes glittering, and blinked at Minseok as slowly as a contented cat. It made even an ice mage somewhat warm around the ears.

“Oh dear, looks like you need a refill on that water,” Jongdae said.

A baffling moment in an otherwise enjoyable day.

Minseok settled into a new routine. He wandered the city, from well-appointed town house to tidy business for his work, nipping out to the hospital when he had time to argue them into letting him try to work on their system for free. He schmoozed and flirted with his clients, then went to work to bring forth ice and pin it where it was wanted. He tried to ignore how the anchor in his mind that worked best to steady him was a vision of the Scale & Claw (read: Jongdae, smiling).

The dynamic in their friend group was wobbly for a bit: Chanyeol disappeared for several days, with Kyungsoo frequently in tow on his return. Also, Jongin’s shyness was acute at the best of times, much less in important situations like a newly resonated friend/roommate. But Kyungsoo’s quiet nature, and the way his solemnity was punctuated by dry little jokes, meant that he settled in among them quickly. Minseok took Jongin with him on the day spent laying cold lines at Kyungsoo’s farm, and Jongin’s greater ease after that was even better than the time they saved traveling via Jongin’s aether.

“How do you know Jongdae?” Minseok asked Kyungsoo one rainy afternoon that the group spent sprawling dominoes across the table, along with their half-full cups and plates of snacks.

Kyungsoo’s cheeks went ruddy.

“Oh, you know,” he muttered. “About the same way everyone knows Jongdae. One minute you’re in for a drink, the next day you’re back for another drink, and the day after that. Well.”

“Not that we know anything about it,” Chanyeol laughed. “Minseok never kisses and tells.”

Which, in a close group of friends, was the only wise course of action, when one was the person to whom Chanyeol came to determine whether he liked boys as well as girls, to whom Jongin came when he nursed a very lightly broken heart over Chanyeol, and to whom Junmyeon came to determine that he actually didn’t like kissing after all and _definitely_ disliked touching or being touched anywhere below the belt.

Ice kept secrets very well.

Minseok sipped his chilled peppermint tea and tried to look inscrutable, which he was not, instead of confused and annoyed, which he was.

Kyungsoo followed him to the washroom later.

“Ignore Chanyeol,” he said while they were washing their hands. “I didn’t mean kissing. If that’s what made your aura go all spiky. I meant, uh. Magical being stuff.”

“He’s a magical being?”

Kyungsoo gazed at him for a long, awkward moment.

“He’s Jongdae. Isn’t that enough?”

Minseok didn’t know why that made him feel so thoroughly chastised.

Thank goodness they were regulars, because over the next several weeks it would otherwise have been impossible to get a chair at the Scale & Claw. Every magic-user in the Nine Realms seemed to have settled there, with maps, crystals, magical compasses, and other assorted dragon-finding gear. Jongdae whistled behind the bar while he made change and slung drinks around.

He always seemed to find a quiet corner for Minseok at lunch. Even if he also, as Minseok discovered after some surreptitious testing by way of fumbling for cups and utensils, worked hard to ensure they never touched one another.

Minseok had tea with the wizard Zitao, which was extremely pleasant. They met every couple of weeks for a while, rolling their eyes at the dragon-hunters. Zitao always apologized for the tedium of Minseok’s work, but he also had endless questions about Minseok’s clients. He had an easy, infectious laugh; Minseok enjoyed embellishing tales of his clients’ mannerisms and odd belongings, just to make the wizard hold his belly and stomp his feet.

“I’ve never seen so many snuffboxes,” Minseok said. “One would almost think she’s the dragon.”

“Oh my, wouldn’t that be a treat, one of our city elders a dragon all along,” Zitao chuckled.

It became a running joke between them, that any of the odd collections among Minseok’s rich clients (in addition to the snuffboxes: small carvings of cats, miniature portraits of actors, hand-dyed yarn) might actually be dragons.

Minseok arrived at the Scale & Claw one midday to find Junmyeon there, slumped over the bar with Jongdae’s hand gripping his shoulder.

Minseok tried to focus on his upset friend, not that touch.

“Here’s someone to help,” Jongdae said.

Over ales and with much coaxing, Junmyeon finally let it out.

“My parents,” he said. “They’ve agreed to a match for me.”

“Oh, Jun.”

Another ale after that had Junmeyon sniffling on Minseok’s shoulder.

“Should’ve just said yes to you, Min. We could’ve worked it out, right? I wouldn’t mind if you went elsewhere for things, you know what I’m like, you wouldn’t ever make me.”

Minseok squeezed him. When he looked up, Jongdae was standing utterly still, frowning. For a moment, it almost seemed as if there were constellations shining in his dark eyes.

“You two were - ?”

Minseok stroked Junmeyon’s hair in the way he’d been calming Jun down since they were 14-year-olds worried about practical exams in elementary spell-writing.

“Not really,” he murmured to Jongdae. “It seemed like a comfortable idea, in the days when graduation loomed and neither of us knew what lay ahead.”

Junmyeon sat up and wiped his eyes.

“Would’ve been a mess anyway,” Jun said. “You actually liking to get naked and sticky with people, and all.”

Minseok grinned.

“And your parents cutting us off when you took up with a mage of no family name and an unpopular element.”

Junmyeon made a rude face and even ruder sound.

“You ought to take him with you to the meeting, though,” Jongdae said. “A fully fledged mage, and one who’s known you a long time as well? Your parents would be fools to pass up the chance for him to poke around in everyone’s energies and make sure you’ll all get along.”

Junmyeon blinked through watery eyes. Poor water users, once they got going, it was difficult to stop.

“Would you do that for me?”

Minseok smacked his forearm.

“Don’t be ridiculous, of course I will.”

Minseok dressed carefully for his meeting with Junmyeon’s family: he had his nicest set of robes cleaned; wore all the earrings he’d earned for various feats of sports and scholarship at the Academy, six up one ear and nine up the other; dug out the magical rings and bracelets gifted to him by his professors, including the bird skull—shaped ring he’d won from an arctic spirit shaped like a snowy owl as tall as Chanyeol and the wide silver cuff into which he had inscribed the names of all his spiritual guides, written in a spare-looking language of straight lines only used these days for divination. He even let Jongin mess with his hair until it reached some standard of beauty that put a flush on Jongin’s bronze cheeks.

“Hang on, Min, I’ve got some stuff.”

Said “stuff” was a deep blue similar to his markings and got smudged into the outer corners of his eyelids. That certainly took Minseok back to school parties that seemed as if they were 20 years ago, not merely 3. He grinned.

“Oh gosh,” Jongin said.

“How are you so handsome?” Chanyeol groaned, throwing his hands in the air.

Minseok scoffed. But he twitched his robes, pleased to look at least official and therefore maybe a little imposing in Jun’s defense.

Junmeyon, who was no slouch mentally, introduced Minseok to his parents as “Ice Mage Minseok,” and they didn’t make the connection to their son’s shabby, dark-haired school friend. They bowed and frowned but made no objection to Minseok’s presence.

He thought Jun would crush his fingers into a paste when they stepped into the salon to meet Junmyeon’s proposed spouse.

Who, as it turned out, was actually two people: a magic-user and a sylph, both quite handsome and dressed in the same sort of fashionable suit as Junmyeon.

“Xingie,” the sylph said, “which one are we supposed to marry?”

He was tall, with sharp features and just a hint of a lisp.

“I don’t know!” the magic-user said, and gave a high giggle that showed a pair of deep dimples.

Minseok felt the pressure on his fingers ease a very little bit.

“My friend Junmyeon is your intended,” he said. “I’m just here for support."

“Oh good. You’re very handsome, mage, but I’m cold just looking at you,” the sylph said.

“Don’t be rude, Sehun,” the magic-user said.

“I’m not! He’s like looking at a whole snowy mountaintop all in one person! You should see his aura, Xingie, it’s _huuuuuuuge_.”

“I’m very sorry, please let me introduce myself, I’m Yixing, and this is my resonant, Sehun.”

“I’m a sylph!” Sehun said while Yixing and Junmyeon shook hands. “Xingie’s a healer, once I helped him dispel a whole plague because it was spread through the air, can I see whether I resonate with you?”

“Sehun,” Yixing said gently. “Please try to calm yourself.”

“But his aura is really pretty, I want to see more of it.”

Minseok wondered who Yixing’s family might be, that Jun’s parents would contract this match. But Yixing’s energy was calm and his eyes warm in his placid face, and his glances at Sehun held only fondness. Sylphs by nature were easily cowed and could be shy: that Sehun wasn’t spoke well of Yixing.

And it was interesting: healing paired with air, but also healing paired with water, and water paired with air. Many different types of flow, working together. An intellectually intriguing combination.

It helped that Yixing gazed at Junmyeon so warmly, but without crowding him, and that Sehun was so obviously excited.

“Why don’t you try?” Minseok said gently. “It might help to know.”

Jun looked at him, his school-polite expression on his face but his eyes a bit frantic.

“I’m sorry, am I weird?” Sehun asked, sounding upset. “I don’t know how to be good at patience, I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Junmyeon said.

Always the caretaker, unable to bear causing discomfort.

“You’re not weird, it’s perfectly reasonable, I’m sorry, I just didn’t expect - “

He held out his hand, and Sehun took it.

“Oh, well, hi,” Sehun said.

The room briefly felt like a typhoon as Junmyeon’s magic rose up and hit Sehun’s air like waves in a gale. Yixing took Sehun’s other hand, and the typhoon winked out, replaced by such a sense of ease that Minseok sighed. He may as well have been lying under a cool breeze by a mountain stream after a long, perfect rest, instead of in Junmyeon’s parents’ salon.

Minseok wasn’t surprised that Junmyeon seemed reluctant to let go of Sehun’s hand. He was a bit surprised to be hugged as soon as Jun let go.

“Min,” Jun whispered.

“That seemed rather wonderful,” Minseok said with his arms wrapped around Junmyeon’s shoulders.

Junmyeon’s magic was like one of those rivers under the glacier, now: deep and quiet and strong.

“Super wonderful,” Sehun said. “Xingie, we definitely have to keep him.”

“It’s not that easy,” Junmyeon said. “We can’t just take one deep breath and think we can be married.”

Sehun opened his mouth, then closed it when Yixing clasped his arm.

“Then let’s talk about it. We know it would please our families, and we know our magic’s compatible. Let’s see what else we might have in common.”

“All right,” Jun said after a moment.

Minseok left them to it and took a carriage to the Scale & Claw. He picked apart the tangle of reactions while he watched the city unspool past him: hope, that Junmyeon could make his family happy, as he felt he must, while himself being happy too; curiosity, as to what his own magic, already heavy and deep, would feel like should he meet someone with whom he resonated; and envy, that two of his friends had so quickly found a greater magical purpose than simply paying their share of the rent.

“Whoa, mage,” Yeri said when he walked into the Scale & Claw. “Looking good today.”

Minseok grinned at her. Jongdae was behind the bar. It was quieter than it had been in recent weeks, and Jongdae was polishing teacups with a soft smile on his face.

All those striking angles of his face aside (not to mention the slimness of his waist and his appealingly knobby hands), Jongdae had a presence that filled the room. Even smiling down at the cup in his hand, one’s eye was drawn to him. Minseok was a mage, not a magical being. He couldn’t see auras. But Jongdae seemed to shine with some internal, metaphorical light of his own.

Jongdae looked up. His expression went strange – Minseok couldn’t tell whether he was surprised or something else. He shuddered, and the cup in his hand fell. Jongdae disappeared behind the bar. By the time his head appeared again, Minseok had taken his customary seat. The teacup in Jongdae’s hand was in pieces.

“Oh no,” Minseok said. “I didn’t mean to startle you, I’m sorry.”

Jongdae frowned down at the porcelain shards. The cup had been green and gilt. Minseok briefly thought – would not have objected – that Jongdae was going to shout at him.

“It’s … all right,” Jongdae said slowly.

“It’s not. I should’ve called out.”

Jongdae stared at him as if he were some sort of apparition.

“You look. Well.”

He must have been quite badly startled, for the shock to last this long and his voice to still sound so unsteady.

“I’ve just come from Junmyeon’s parents’ house, from the meeting with his arranged spouse.”

That finally seemed to snap Jongdae out of his shock. He had numerous questions about the meeting, Yixing, and Sehun. His attention wandered more than Minseok was used to, though. He trailed off several times, gazing blankly in Minseok’s direction before shaking his head.

“I suppose we’re lucky they didn’t decide they’d rather be married to you,” he said at one point.

Minseok laughed and waved one hand.

“No one in Junmyeon’s parents’ circle would be so tacky. Besides, I’m just a weird ice mage with barely a coin to my name. Even Sehun said he felt cold just looking at me.”

“Some people prefer the cold,” Jongdae said.

Oh, Minseok was tired of dancing around in circles. Did Jongdae even know how the light of the tavern seemed to follow him around, so that he walked in his own glow?

Minseok put his elbow on the bar and rested his chin in his palm. Tilted his head and gave that smile that, if he remembered correctly, had melted the clothing off a number of Academy liaisons. Jongdae was so still that he didn’t even appear to be breathing.

“If you know any such people, please send them my way. It’s been literally years since I was last on a date.”

Jongdae’s eyes really did seem to sometimes contain constellations. One could fall into them like staring at the night sky. The wood of the bar was a barrier as wide as a sea, but Minseok would cross it, if he could claim those stars as his own.

“Hey boss,” Yeri called out. “Unstop your ears, I need three ales and a porter, I’ve asked you twice already.”

Her grin at Minseok was broad and knowing. Minseok wrinkled his nose at her, and she laughed.

By the time he was done drawing the drinks, Jongdae had emerged from his fugue.

“Tell me about your jewelry,” he said.

It was the least mortifying way Minseok had of talking about himself, since he could pretend that each story had more to do with the jewelry than his accomplishments. Yeri had returned before he was even done talking about his earrings, plunking her elbows on the bar with a grin to listen.

Jongdae’s jaw clenched briefly. His focus as Minseok talked was almost uncomfortable in its intensity. It made Minseok feel rather naked. As well as rather annoyed that they didn’t seem to be about to get naked.

He paused, with his fingers toying at his rings. The magical objects were more personal to speak of. He wouldn’t hesitate in front of Yeri, Kyungsoo, or Sehun: magical beings could be trusted with any sort of magical secret, always.

But then, so could friends. Perhaps a show of trust would inspire Jongdae to do something about their flirtation.

So he told them about the bird-skull ring, about the onyx bands that he had carved himself in the darkness under the ice and the moonstone bands that he carved in the midst of snow glare that left him as unable to see as the darkness. He told them about the cuff naming his spirit-guides, if not the names themselves, and the bracelet given to him by his favorite professor, which, if he ever snapped it, would bring him aid. And all the others, too: the telling took them past the afternoon and into evening, with many interruptions, until Minseok’s throat felt worn with talking.

“Well,” Yeri said. “You’re both fancy and well-loved, to be covered in all this pretty junk. But I could’ve guessed that from your aura, nobody as powerful as you looks so clean and bright if they’re not a good person.”

She reached out and took one hand in both of hers. Minseok jumped with surprise. Jongdae, strangely enough, bared his teeth in what was definitely not a smile.

“Well, curious as I was, I’m not surprised there’s nothing there,” Yeri said. “Oof, mage, you’re so chilly you make me want to drop all my leaves and take a nice long nap.”

Her green magic was effervescent, tickling against his own as she winked and traced a fingertip along the blue swirl on his wrist.

“Got these all over?” she purred at him.

The sound Jongdae made was suspiciously like a snarl.

Minseok didn’t think for an instant that she was serious. And whatever fit Jongdae was having was adorable.

“I assume so,” he purred back. “Though no one as of yet has volunteered to get a good look at me from the back and say.”

The tankard in Jongdae’s hand met the bar top with a crack. He whirled around and stalked away through the kitchen doors without looking at either of them.

As adults and professionals, Minseok and Yeri waited until the door closed after him before they started to cackle.

“He _is_ flirting with me, right?” Minseok asked when they were done snickering.

“Oh yeah,” Yeri said. “I can’t believe you weren’t introduced to The Wonders of the Room Upstairs on your first night here. I figure that means he really _like-_ likes you, mage.”

There was a bit of news to brighten anyone’s day. The longer it took for Jongdae to return, the funnier it became, until Minseok walked home with a grin on his face, whistling as he went.

A couple of days passed before he returned to the Scale & Claw: he had lunch with the city wizard one day, and the next met Junmyeon and his fiancés for a very pleasant meal at a fashionable restaurant. They seemed to be working themselves out: Yixing treated Jun with exquisite care, and if Sehun clutched at him a lot, it seemed to be pure enthusiasm, leaving Junmyeon with perpetually pink cheeks and an expression of pleased disbelief.

Minseok found himself on his accustomed stool at the bar the next day, facing an empty space and reading the newspaper over the shoulder of the person next to him. The largest type and most lurid headlines were reserved for a story about several robberies among wealthy citizens. The woman reading sighed.

“Even the professional gossip-hounds are getting tired of waiting to find this damn dragon,” she said. “There hasn’t been anything new in weeks.”

“Maybe they’ve left.”

The woman shook her head.

“Everybody still scries that they’re here. On this side of town, even. But the signal’s too strong to pinpoint any more than that, it’s maddening.”

She looked him up and down.

“I suppose ice mages aren’t much for scrying?”

“Sadly, no.”

The woman sighed again.

A door banged, and Minseok looked up to see Jongdae emerge from the upstairs doorway. He rushed across the walkway and down the stairs. Made his way through the crowd with his customary smiles and touches, worked his way down the patrons sitting at the bar.

“Hani, my love,” he said, and kissed the hand of the woman sitting next to Minseok.

“I was about to give away your spot, mage,” he said to Minseok, in a tone distinctly colder than his previous remark.

The woman snorted.

“Then I suppose it’s good I didn’t stay away any longer,” Minseok said.

He made sure to duck his chin and blink slowly. Jongdae scowled at him, then huffed and turned away. When he plunked a frost-tinged glass in front of Minseok a moment later, the woman – Hani – laughed outright.

Jongdae’s grumpiness toward Minseok only lasted a couple of days before it found new targets. The dragon-hunters in the tavern grew restive: the room was louder and less friendly. Watching Jongdae throw out an absolute bull of a man, easily twice his size, after a fight gave Minseok a marked case of curiosity about how strong Jongdae was and what other physical tricks he might know.

The papers continued to blare their alarm about robberies, and Minseok found himself daily listening to the worries of his wealthy clients about their collections and their safely, fielding questions about the defensive uses of ice. Minseok refused several offers of many months’ pay to create wards that would impale an intruder with lethal icicles.

Even Zitao fretted over the thefts at their occasional tea. Minseok recognized some of the names of victims as people whose homes he had worked in and tried not to feel guilty about refusing to build those wards.

The city was frantic around him, sidewalks crowded with magic-users standing on street corners with pendulums and crystals and Minseok’s work days longer, taken up by long, rambling conversations with distressed rich people. Minseok moved through it like a leaf floating on a stream, serene above the tumble of city’s currents. Why worry about a gang of thieves when his friends were safe and growing into new levels of happiness?

Why fret about dragons when there was Jongdae?

Ice was patient. Now that Minseok knew Jongdae’s flirtation was more than idle, he could wait. He could watch how Jongdae embraced his regulars, kissed their hands and cheeks, and remain unperturbed.

It was less easy to remain unperturbed when Jongdae was standing by their table, teasing Sehun into splutters while Yixing and Junmyeon laughed, when a pair of arms went around Jongdae’s waist from behind and a person with white hair kissed the side of Jongdae’s neck.

“Hello, my love,” the person said in a bright, ringing voice.

Jongdae’s face looked caught halfway between a smile and shock as he blinked at Minseok.

“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

Jongdae shook himself and smiled.

“Of course, Baek,” he said. “Everyone, my good friend Baekhyun.”

He was one of those people with an easy manner, greeting everyone at the table with a brilliant smile on his handsome, small-featured face.

“Well,” he said, voice slightly deeper and smile slightly wider when the introductions came around to Minseok, “a mage with the face of an angel and the aura of a snow cat about to eat something small and helpless. Want to be best friends forever? I’ll pretend to be small and helpless, if you like.”

Whatever Minseok’s aura did at that made Baekhyun smirk. Minseok would’ve been more offended, if Jongdae hadn’t looked quite so annoyed. It ruined Minseok’s evening anyhow, watching Baekhyun follow Jongdae around, stand close enough to touch every time they were behind the bar together. Yeri served their table for the rest of the evening, shaking her head and grinning at Minseok with each round.

“How come you don’t like me?” Baekhyun said at lunch a couple of days later, choosing his moment for when Jongdae was in the kitchen. “I’m extremely charming, everybody likes me.”

“I never said I dislike you,” Minseok said.

Baekhyun gazed at him.

“Your aura tells me different.”

Minseok figured it must be true.

“What manner of being are you?”

Baekhyun grinned brightly and tilted his head to the side. He was remarkably handsome, which was part of the trouble.

“I’m a spark,” he said.

He lifted one hand, and a half-dozen small white lights danced in his palm.

“You don’t have any inner darkness that I can see, but I sure would like to see whether I could light you up anyway,” he said.

The lights went out, but Baekhyun kept his hand outstretched. Minseok sighed. He figured that if he had a resonant, it would probably be some sort of life lesson for it to turn out to be Baekhyun. He grasped Baekhyun’s hand.

There wasn’t anything dramatic, but Minseok felt his magic respond to Baekhyun, like morning sun on ice. An almost-thing, a potential not quite reached.

“I’ve never been so disappointed to be so relieved,” Baekhyun murmured.

A loud clatter made them both jump. Jongdae stood by the bar, still holding the sides of a tray and glaring at their clasped hands.

“I’m so sad, Dae,” Baekhyun said.

His grip on Minseok’s hand was tight.

“I really did hope to be his resonant. He’s so handsome, and I look so good in wooly sweaters.”

“If you’re not going to resonate, at least eat your damn lunch,” Jongdae said.

Baekhyun laughed and let go of Minseok’s hand. He chattered at Minseok – and at Jongdae, when he graced them with his scowling presence – for the rest of the meal, but with all the flirtation switched off. By the end of it, Minseok found himself rather liking this light-being. He told terrible jokes, teased Jongdae relentlessly, and gave Yeri back as good as he got.

So it was no surprise that Baekhyun became a fixture next to him at lunch, or at their table when any of the friends crowded around a table. He and Chanyeol brought the noise out in one another, but Baekhyun also seemed to relish Kyungsoo’s steadiness, leaning his head on Soo’s shoulder whenever he was permitted.

It was Chanyeol’s boisterousness, a week or so later, that knocked Baekhyun into Jongin. Jongin, with an aether-user’s grace, caught Baekhyun around the waist. The room was briefly too bright to see anything, then too dark, and everyone was left blinking while their eyes protested all the hoopla. When Minseok’s eyes cleared, Jongin’s mouth was hanging open, and the expression Baekhyun’s face was softer than anything Minseok had seen before.

Jongin clutched at Baekhyun, and they disappeared. After a couple of breaths, they were back, both with damp hair, and Baekhyun looked a little out of breath.

“Did we just go to the southern hemisphere?” he laughed.

“I think so?” Jongin wavered.

So that was a hell of a thing, watching Jongin slowly come to believe that his reality had adjusted itself while Baekhyun sat in his lap and planned a 17-course meal around the world. It was all so very happy that Minseok begrudged the melancholy that prompted him to stay behind when everyone scattered for the night. He sat in the back corner, sipping ice wine, and watched Jongdae clear tables, talk patrons into drinking glasses of water, and gently steer others out into the night. At Jongdae’s nod, Minseok gathered up the remaining cups from his own table and carried them to the bar.

He nursed the glass of cold water Jongdae set before him while the sounds of clean-up eventually tapered off behind him, and Jongdae sat next to him, for once on the same side of the bartop.

“All right, mage?”

Minseok shrugged.

“Feeling sorry for myself.”

Jongdae made a small, sympathetic noise.

“I was so focused at the Abbey,” Minseok said. “There wasn’t any time to dwell on being lonely. Perhaps it doesn’t seem fast to Jun, or Channie, or Jongin. They’ve been here in the world for years, working and shaking hands with every magical being they meet, just in case. And it’s not as if I think having resonants takes them away from me, but – “

“But ice changes slowly,” Jongdae said.

Minseok sighed. It made no sense for Jongdae to understand, but what a comfort that he did.

“It’s also not a type of magic that plays well with many others.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Minseok watched the way Jongdae scratched lightly at the wood of the bar. He wanted to take that hand and press it to his own cheek. He slid his hand closer, and Jongdae drew his away.

“More water for you,” he said, getting up and putting the bar between them. “Can’t have my favorite customer wandering out drunk for the pickpockets to target.”

Minseok was briefly so annoyed that his newly filled water glass turned opaque with frost.

“Am I?” he asked, and didn’t bother to disguise the irritation in his tone. “Your favorite customer.”

There was that fathomless look in Jongdae’s eyes again, as if a galaxy were contained in them.

“Yes, Minseok. You are.”

And by all the demons of the frozen wastes, Minseok wanted to _hit_ something. All this useless dancing around. He downed the water and stalked out into the night. He almost hoped that a pickpocket would come for him. He was in such a mood that giving someone a case of frostbite sounded satisfying.

Minseok lay with his head pillowed on one arm, listening to the quiet, empty house around him and thinking. He had fought ancient, powerful beings and won from them the secrets of the chill of space and of the gardens that bloomed in the pulsing heart of the earth. Surely he could find it in himself to woo one gregarious tavern-keeper.

He heard a thump down the hallway and Jongin’s high-pitched laugh.

Aether-users, as travelers, by necessity learned about all the known peoples of this world and those close enough to touch.

Minseok rose from bed and ignored the fact that Jongin and Baekhyun appeared to be slow-dancing in the kitchen to no music that he could hear.

“Jongin, are there any people whose romantic customs mean that the more serious about they are about someone, the more reticent they are to begin things?”

Baekhyun was the one who smiled, broad and brilliant.

“Oh yes, mage,” he said. “There most certainly are.”

In the morning, Minseok summoned 3 message-sparrows: one to his supervisor, one to that day’s client, and one to Zitao with apologies for his needing some time away. He left a note for his housemates and boarded the funicular to the top of the mountain.

The Abbey remained home, with its chill and its silence, even if he was given one of the guest rooms now. It was, at least, one of the guest rooms for mages, and not one of the ones filled with furs and hot-water pipes. He changed out his mage’s robes for the simpler outfit of a monk and set to work.

It took him 6 days to complete his task. They were good days: the deep, slow work of ice during the day and the silent, comfortable company of the monks at night: meditation, dinner, and early sleep.

The work was a pleasure. He dropped down into the living ice of the glacier to pull out ice that was crystal clear with the barest hint of green. He was smart enough to ask the monks during the hour they were permitted to speak each day, so that he didn’t waste ages of time wandering around in the wind looking for snowfoil plants, with their five-petaled white blossoms and greyish stems and leaves.

The longest part of the work was forming the ice into a graceful shape with the snowfoil stems embedded tidily inside. The damned things kept trying to wrinkle. But in the end, Minseok had a very pretty teacup and saucer as clear as glass, with flowers curving between invisible layers amid swirls of frost crystals like the ones that decorated his skin. Once it was done, Minseok pinned the cup into time, so that it wouldn’t melt. It wouldn’t be at all useful for hot tea, unless one drank it quickly, but the cup would last as long as the glacier did. Minseok packed it into a blue silken box from the Abbey’s gift shop, slept one more night on the ice, dressed again in his best robes and jewelry, and rode back down the mountain.

He was on the first trip of the morning, so it was still quite early when Minseok alighted at the city station. He went to the Scale & Claw anyway – waiting would be stupid.

Because Jongdae was there, of course. Behind the bar, polishing a teacup. He watched Minseok approach him with surprise in his eyebrows and worry in his little half-smile.

Minseok plunked the box on the bar and hoped that he would not be shortly forcing himself to find a new place to eat lunch.

“Where have you been?” Jongdae asked.

“Please open that.”

Jongdae frowned, but he lifted the lid off the box, and the 4 sides fell to the bar top, exposing the teacup.

Jongdae jumped backward as if he thought the thing might explode. But before Minseok could worry, he crept forward again, looking wary – and a bit greedy, Minseok thought.

He looked like a cat with an unfamiliar toy, examining the cup: he peered at it from all angles, leaning in to stare and then rearing back suddenly. It took several full minutes for him to touch it at all, and then he did so with only one fingertip. He shuddered as if it shocked him, and looked over at Minseok with wide eyes.

“This is. This is made of glacier ice, stuck in time,” he said.

“It is.”

“You made this. You had to use different kinds of power to do it. This is a mage gift.”

“Yes.”

Jongdae lifted the cup in his hands. The wonder on his face was so lovely that Minseok, for a moment, didn’t even care what the outcome of this conversation might be. But after he had stared at it, Jongdae set the cup down, and when he lifted his eyes to Minseok’s his grin was bright.

“Ice mage Minseok,” he said. “Are you courting me?”

“I am,” Minseok said.

Jongdae nodded. He closed his eyes briefly, hands flat on the bar, and took one long, slow (worrisome) breath. He packed the teacup carefully back into its box, and Minseok tried to pack his disappointment away with it, to deal with later.

Except that, instead of pushing the box back across the counter, Jongdae walked around until he stood between Minseok’s knees, and Minseok found that there wasn’t any disappointment to bundle up after all.

“Thank the great song of the sun for your impatience,” Jongdae said.

If he’d been allowed to concentrate, Minseok might’ve been perplexed by the way his magic trembled at Jongdae’s touch, though he could feel no magic of Jongdae’s own. But that question would have to come later, when they weren’t kissing.

It had been so long since the last time Minseok had put his hands on anyone with more than a fleeting touch. He felt as if there were sparks in the palms of his hands as he cupped Jongdae’s jaw. Desire made him feel unstable in his own skin as Jongdae’s tongue curled around his own.

He didn’t think he imagined reluctance in Jongdae’s face when they separated.

“How do you feel about some privacy?” Jongdae asked.

He nuzzled up against Minseok’s cheek like a cat. Minseok wanted to grab him by the hair and kiss him until neither of them could breathe. Which, granted, was a strong argument in favor of privacy.

“Yes,” he said.

Jongdae took Minseok’s hand and pulled him off the stool.

“Yeri! You’re on your own for lunch!” he yelled (to a responding cackle from the kitchen) and pulled Minseok up the flight of stairs against the tavern’s inner wall, through the door at the top.

When it had been the Barrow, this upstairs room had been set aside for parties of an extremely sketchy nature, dimly lit and populated by the sorts of people one wouldn’t wish to meet in a dark alley. Now the room was cozy and well-lived in, with a few clothes scattered on the floor, an enormous and fluffy-looking bed, and even more teacups, not only lining the walls on their shelves but also perched on every available surface.

The clutter might’ve given Minseok hives if he hadn’t had more important things on his mind for the moment, such as the extraordinary convenience of how close in size they were, so that all the nice parts lined up against one another, and no one was going to get a neck cramp while they stood in the middle of the floor swaying in their efforts to grab one another closer.

“Too many clothes,” Jongdae muttered eventually.

“Yes, you’re a genius,” Minseok said.

Minseok’s fingers didn’t fumble, unlacing his boots, even though his eyes were trained on Jongdae the whole time, watching him do the same. They kept smiling at one another despite their rush. Minseok had the advantage of robes being easy to unhook and drop to the floor and the simplicity of his drawstring trousers and plain shirt underneath. Jongdae was faster, though. Minseok was briefly distracted by the swiftness with which Jongdae’s fingers unbuttoned his trousers, thinking how eager he was to feel those fingers on himself.

“Leave the jewelry on,” Jongdae said in a deep, wicked-sounding voice.

Minseok tossed his head and let Jongdae stare at him. Stared himself at the lean lines of Jongdae’s body, until his hands itched too much, and Minseok stepped forward to place his hands around Jongdae’s tiny waist, kiss the hollow above his collarbone.

“What color was your hair before your trials?” Jongdae asked with just enough hitch in his voice to make Minseok pull him even closer.

“Black.”

Jongdae’s laugh turned into a low cry when Minseok dragged teeth up his neck.

“Were you very shocked that it _all_ turned white?”

Minseok stood straight and lifted one (white) eyebrow in Jongdae’s direction.

“That’s what you want to be doing right now? Teasing me about my pubic hair?”

Jongdae smirked.

“Oh no,” he said. “I would much prefer for you to take this lovely cock that it surrounds and fuck me with it.”

His hand around the organ in question made Minseok groan, then wrap his arm around Jongdae’s waist and bear them both down onto that impressive bed while Jongdae laughed.

Jongdae lay under him, a smiling, wriggling delight with wandering hands and an equally wandering mouth. Minseok kissed everywhere he could reach. He delighted in every curve his palms skimmed over, in the way Jongdae’s belly trembled under his hand, in the way Jongdae arched and gasped at the intrusion of his fingers.

“Frozen hells, I am not going to last,” Minseok said when he was finally buried to the hilt, with Jongdae’s heels digging into the backs of his legs.

Jongdae’s smile was broad but soft, and he drew his fingers down Minseok’s chest.

“How long has it been?”

“I’ve lived with monks the past three years,” Minseok said.

“Well. Let’s not make you wait any more, shall we?”

It wasn’t precisely fair of Jongdae to undulate and squeeze like that, but it felt marvelous, and Minseok discovered that he still knew how to move. He still knew how to take his lover in hand and stroke in time with his thrusts.

He didn’t last – Jongdae was too tight and warm around him, too beautiful under him, and Minseok’s magic still shivered under his skin when they touched each other – but it was almost as good to stay inside while he brought Jongdae over with his hand and feel Jongdae’s pleasure shudder through him.

After they’d cleaned up a bit (Jongdae pouting at Minseok’s disregard for the chill of the water from the ewer), they lay tangled under Jongdae’s feather-soft sheets to kiss and smile. Minseok had never been the type to wish to make declarations after one assignation. But he pushed his fingers through Jongdae’s dark hair and couldn’t imagine wishing to lie next to anyone else.

Jongdae put a fingertip to Minseok’s forehead and traced down his temple, across his cheek, down his neck. Following the swirls of his ice-crystal marks. Minseok lay still when Jongdae threw back the sheet and rose to his knees to run his fingers down the marks on Minseok’s arms, his torso, his legs. Minseok let Jongdae roll him over.

“So you _do_ have them all over,” Jongdae said.

Minseok laughed, until the soft sweep over Jongdae’s hand over his legs, over his ass, and up his back turned that laugh into a sigh.

“I hope this isn’t a one-time occurrence,” he said somewhat later, after more of that quiet, languid kissing.

Jongdae tugged at Minseok’s necklaces, and his gaze was warm.

“I was half a day away from riding up the mountain and pounding on the Abbey door,” he said. “I was extremely put out to do without my favorite customer.”

Several of the beings whose knowledge Minseok had sought during his trials had been the sort to manipulate emotion. He had learned to control his facial expressions. He was glad to keep his flinch contained, hearing “favorite customer” again, when his own magic trembled and his heart almost felt as if it were doing the same.

“Ice mage,” Jongdae said softly. “Minseok.”

He kissed Minseok with a softness that belied the joke of “favorite customer.”

“Thank you for my teacup. And for coming back down off the mountain.”

Minseok gave himself the gift of more kisses, more time spent wrapped around Jongdae, bare skin and soft voices. But he couldn’t stay forever. He had roommates to greet, messages to check, a job to catch up on. It was like extricating himself from clinging vines even to emerge from Jongdae’s bed, much less to dress and to leave.

But leave he did, with one last lingering kiss at the bar and a promise to return later. Minseok wandered the streets toward home, feeling the loose-limbed stickiness he hadn’t felt in years, the tenderness of well-used lips.

Jongdae had seemed to understand what he meant, putting his knowledge and his gifts into the cup. He had called it a “mage gift,” as if he knew what it meant: not an idle courtship, but a hope for something as durable as the glacier, as deep as the cold.

The question was: did Jongdae want that too?

He had been present and eager in his room. Minseok had no question about their attraction to each other. But he couldn’t help thinking of the phrase “favorite customer.” He couldn’t help knowing that Jongin and Chanyeol – even, in his own way, Junmyeon – had been in that bed too. Had kissed those eternally smiling lips.

Had they been “favorite customers” too?

Minseok was so caught up in all these thoughts that he neglected to watch his surroundings and bumped hard into someone at a street crossing.

“I beg your pardon,” he said.

The woman gripping his arm was tall, with long hair the color of desert sands piled high on her head, held in place by a long pin with a huge orange stone that pulsed with its own light. Her magic was hot and dry, the antithesis of his own, and their two powers scratched at one another.

“Well, friend,” she said. “My compass has spun in circles for weeks now, ever since I arrived in this godsforsaken den of gears and stone.”

She leaned in and sniffed.

“You reek of sex and power, mage. And the ifrit in my hairpin is weeping with rage. So I’ll hazard a guess that even if you aren’t the dragon, you know who it is, and I’m not much of a mind to let you go until you tell me.”

It was laughable. Her nonsense aside, no desert witch could hold him. Her skin was a clear gold several shades darker than her hair and her eyes human brown.

Minseok was a mage. He barely needed to sink into himself before she snatched her hand back, hissing at the pain of the sudden freeze.

What sank when she smiled, however, was his stomach.

“This ice mage!” she bellowed in a voice magnified by desert winds, “he knows the dragon!”

Minseok found himself the object of attention of every being on the street. There was an instant of stillness, then a shout, movement. Message-sparrows rose into the air.

Minseok turned and ran.

No one tried to hurt him, precisely, though he dodged a couple of nets and something unpleasantly akin to a disturbingly large spiderweb. He didn’t know the alleyways of the city anymore and ran without a plan, angling through one small market square and dodging carriages and beasts on several crowded streets. He thanked his recent trials that he was fit enough to clamber over piled boxes and that he still had the instinct to lash out with a punch at grasping hands.

His pursuers were too numerous, though. Minseok knew that he’d tire long before all of them wore out. He could see message-sparrows and little winged clockwork devices buzzing around in the air around him, as the other magic-users tracked him.

He saw white out of the corner of his eye and pelted toward it without thinking – a small church. They wouldn’t give refuge to a mage, but the building was of the palest stone. He sent up an apology to the gods inside as he climbed up to wedge himself under the eaves and cover himself in frost. He breathed into the power of his locket and became the stillness of the glacier, the silence of a snowy dawn, the unbroken white of new snowfall.

A group of magic-users tumbled into the street below him, panting hard.

“Wily bastard,” one of them said.

“Did you see what they look like?” another said.

“Didn’t Jenain yell ‘ice mage’?” the last of them mused. “I’ve only seen one of those since I’ve been in town.”

He raised his hand, and one of the winged clockwork balls alighted in his hand.

“Ice mage hangs out at the Scale and Claw every day,” he said to it. “Tell everyone to get to Jongdae.”

Oh no.

Minseok almost lost his grip on his magic. A couple of pieces of ice fell off him, and his heart hammered like an alarm bell when one of the magic-users looked around, but thankfully never up. By the time he had calmed himself, the street was empty.

Well, there was an answer to his side of his earlier questions. Minseok went up. There were bound to be magic-users and eyes on the rooftops, but there wouldn’t be as many as there were on the ground. And anyway, he had no idea where he was and needed to see.

He leapt from the gable of the church to the school next door, which had a small roof garden and accompanying garden shed that took him even higher. He wasn’t wholly convinced that the building 8 or so blocks away was the Scale & Claw, but a vague sense of recognition and a hunch were enough for the moment. He sprinted and leapt from rooftop to rooftop, sliding on ice when possible to increase his speed.

At the first wide road crossing, Minseok skidded to a stop amid a flash of despair.

“Hey, Minseok,” a voice called out.

Minseok gaped over his shoulder at Sehun, who stood several feet away, grinning.

“Need a lift?”

At Minseok’s nod, Sehun flung out his arms and threw Minseok on a blast of wind across the intersection. He hit the other roof too fast and rolled across it hard enough to fall off the other side. He flung one hand out to try to make enough snow to slow his fall, but there wasn’t enough space or time, he was going to hit hard -

“Not to worry, Minseok,” Kyungsoo said, leaning down into the soft earth that had caught Minseok so gently.

Kyungsoo reached down one hand and helped Minseok out of the soil.

“Just a little farther. That way,” Kyungsoo said, pointing.

Minseok ran. He dodged a couple of message-sparrows and one magic-user whose resonant stumbled into them at the last minute, making them lose their grasp on Minseok’s robe so that his stride barely faltered.

The street outside the Scale & Claw was mobbed. As Minseok crouched in a dark corner, he stared out at the array of magic-users, magical beings, and – strangely enough – a large number of the City Watch milling around in the street.

He’d never make it.

“Hey, mage,” Baekhyun said in his ear.

Minseok jumped and whirled to glare into Baekhyun’s grin.

“Are you ready to run?” Baekhyun said.

Minseok took a deep breath and nodded.

“Turn away, now,” Baekhyun said. “Focus on the door. Shade your eyes.”

Minseok grinned and pulled the hood of his robe over his head. An ice mage’s robe, with a hood designed to be used in a glaring white world. It flopped down over his face, and when he tied it in place, the black net eye protectors made the world dim.

Baekhyun laughed and turned him so he faced the Scale & Claw.

The world flashed impossibly bright, and Minseok ran into the cries that rose up, dodging forms that were more shadow than anything else. He hit the door with his shoulder and burst through into the Scale & Claw.

The dining room was filled with people, and the air sparked with magic. The spears of the City Watch bristled in this crowd too. But Minseok’s eyes sought only Jongdae, found him standing in front of the bar scowling, arms crossed over his chest.

The magic-users nearest Minseok noticed him and turned his way, hands raised.

“Yeah, I think not,” Yeri said.

Said magic-users found themselves tangled in a sudden knot of branches. Speed and a few bursts of ice got him to Jongdae, where Minseok took up position in front of him, hands covered in frost, ready to protect.

That was the point at which Minseok noticed the wizard Zitao standing next to the captain of the Watch, both of whom looked as if they’d been facing off with a shadow mage and a magic-user dripping with amulets.

“You’ll tell us where the dragon is,” the shadow mage said to Minseok.

“He’ll go to jail, is what he’ll do,” the captain of the Watch said, “on suspicion of multiple burglaries.”

“Multiple what?” Minseok said.

“I’m so disappointed,” Zitao said. “Ice mage. How could you? All those people who trusted you, let you into their homes.”

“Excuse me?”

“Minseok.”

Zitao shook his head as if he were sad.

“I really did think you were smarter than this. Stealing from your clients on such a regular schedule, as if we wouldn’t notice when you disappeared for a week and the robberies stopped.”

“You’re not taking him anywhere,” the magic-user said. “Not until we know where the dragon is.”

Minseok untied his hood, the better to glare.

“You’ve all lost your minds,” he said. “I haven’t robbed anybody, and I definitely haven’t got the faintest idea where the dragon is, I haven’t even been looking for them!”

“The compasses don’t lie, you’re covered in dragon energy,” the shadow mage said. “And why else would my resonant try to trip me up, stop me from coming here, if it wasn’t to protect one of their own?”

He unfurled a shadow hovering by his coat pocket to reveal the agonized face of a lamia, who shrieked as he pulled the shadow back around her.

“She’ll learn to do better,” the shadow mage said. “And you’ll tell me what you know.”

Minseok was so angry that everyone was up to their knees in ice: no trouble for him, but unpleasant for the rest of the room.

“Which is nothing, as I told you,” he snarled.

Zitao snapped his fingers, and time took a pause. Minseok looked over his shoulder to see Jongdae in mid-squint but otherwise seemingly unharmed.

“What is this?”

“My poor, stupid friend,” Zitao said. “The thing is, you will both say what you know about the dragon and go to jail for robbery. Preferably some prison far off in the desert, where you’ll be too weak to return before I’ve solidified my bond with the creature. Hurry up now, time isn’t wasting, but I dislike these sorts of spells. They wrinkle the skin, and I do want to look my best when I meet my new resonant.”

“For the last time, I don’t – “

Everyone in the room moved. Which was odd, because Zitao hadn’t lowered his hand yet. He frowned. Then he looked over Minseok’s shoulder and frowned some more before his eyes went wide.

Minseok tried to turn, except that he found himself snatched up in the grasp of a black-scaled limb with 4 extremely worrisome claws at the end of it. And he rose up into the air.

And his magic rang out like the sound of a bell.

“You???” a number of voices said around the room.

“But you’re so short,” one voice said, plaintively.

The dragon holding Minseok gestured, and the lamia fell out of shadow onto the floor. Yeri swooped in and pulled her aside, wrapped her in a hug.

“What a fool you are,” the dragon said.

His voice was a low growl that sounded familiar to Minseok. Where was Jongdae? Surely the dragon wouldn’t have hurt him, they were usually so cautious not to hurt if they didn’t have to.

“Will you stop wiggling, Min, it was very pleasant earlier, but now is not the time.”

Oh.

Well, all right, maybe he was just as stupid as Zitao had suggested, after all.

“You can’t possibly be serious about an ice mage,” Zitao the wizard said. “Ice? For a dragon?”

The dragon – Jongdae – growled and held Minseok closer to his chest.

Zitao’s expression went sly, his eyes half-lidded.

“I’m a mage of fire and stone,” he said. “Master of time and speaker to the dead. Why this cold little man when you could have me?”

“I walk in the shadows between dimensions,” the shadow mage said. “I know secrets even you won’t have heard.”

That let loose shouts by every magic-user in the room, as they called out their powers and knowledge, voices overlapping into a wave a noise.

“Enough,” Jongdae said, not loudly but in a tone that tolled around the room until it was silent.

He held Minseok closer.

“I am Chen comet-rider,” he said. “I am the cold light of the morning star and singer of the first rays of dawn against the earth’s cloak of air. And you will tell me I don’t know what I want? This heart in my arms has swum in the dark rivers that run like veins to the top of the world. It has won the secrets of beings more powerful than you could ever hope to be, both living and dead, and yet his hands remain clean of death. This heart is as pure as the ice from the first winter, and he is whom I choose.”

Minseok clutched at the limb holding him and tried not to blush.

“Plus which, just look at him,” Jongdae muttered.

“Right?” Baekhyun shouted from near the door.

Minseok failed at the not-blushing part.

“That all sounds very fancy, Mr. Chen Dragon, sir, but he’s still been accused of multiple crimes,” the captain of the Watch said.

“Oh please, do you think I can’t smell lies? This wizard of yours obviously set the whole thing up. Put him in prison togs and make him sleep on the floor for a couple of nights and he’ll tell you where everything is,” Jongdae said.

“You hideous creature, I will absolutely – “

“Or I could bite your arm off,” Jongdae said. “I haven’t bitten anyone’s limb off in ages, but as I remember, it has a delightful crunch.”

Everyone in the room took a step back.

“Ugh, fine,” Zitao said, and held out his hands to be cuffed.

“Oh here,” Jongdae said.

Minseok discovered that he did not precisely enjoy the sensation of being held around the waist by a large creature leaning out over a crowd.

Still, it was probably less unpleasant than enduring all those claws resting on one’s face, as the city wizard was currently experiencing.

“Ouch,” Zitao said.

“No magic for you until springtime,” Jongdae said. “You can stand trial like a regular human.”

Zitao’s glare was potent enough that Minseok snuggled back against Jongdae’s chest plates. The hum Jongdae made was so deep that Minseok felt it in his spine more than he heard it.

What a perplexing day.

“Everybody out,” Jongdae said. “Tavern’s closed tonight.”

The crowd sagged and grumbled but slowly filtered out of the Scale & Claw. Jongdae set Minseok down on the floor and approached the lamia. He laid his … hand? paw? Minseok had no idea, on the lamia’s head. She smiled.

“You dare,” the shadow mage snarled.

Jongdae turned and snapped his jaws. Had Minseok been the target of so very many, very large teeth clicking in his direction, he would’ve run away too.

“Want a job?” Yeri asked, making it sound like the job came with very pleasant benefits indeed.

“Oh yes,” the lamia said.

“Great, go away,” Jongdae said.

Yeri hauled the lamia through the kitchen doors, snickering.

“You too, Baekhyun,” Jongdae said.

A faint “aw!” came from the other side of the room, then the sound of the door closing.

Minseok took a moment to simply stare. He had no basis of comparison to know whether a being as tall as the railing of the upstairs landing was large or small for a dragon. But Jongdae – Chen – fit within his own space. He had scales the black of coal that glittered silver in the light of the tavern’s lamps. The scales on Jongdae’s chest were larger than those on the rest of him, and matte granite grey. Warm yellow eyes glowed above his muzzle, rife with black teeth as long as Minseok’s forearm and topped by long whiskers that seemed to move lazily in an unfelt wind.

“Do I call you Chen now?”

The dragon ducked his head, looking almost shy, with his forelimbs curled in toward his chest. Minseok felt a pulse of magic, and there was no longer a legendary being in front of him, but merely the face he most liked to see.

“I like how you call me Jongdae, though.”

How a person – a dragon – could say such a thing to the floorboards, sounding so miserable, after his triumphant overcoming of excessive stupidity on the part of an entire town, Minseok didn’t know. But it was seriously cute. He stepped close and took Jongdae’s hands in his own.

“The name doesn’t matter, it’s you I like,” he said.

Jongdae’s mouth twisted.

“Sure,” he said. “Now that you know I’m a dragon.”

“Right. I didn’t like you at all earlier, when I was balls deep in your ass,” Minseok said.

Jongdae laughed. Minseok joined him, out of pure relief, when Jongdae flung his arms around Minseok’s neck and shouted.

“Min! How can you be mean to me, I just offered to bite off someone’s arm for you?”

“How was that mean?” Minseok said, pulling Jongdae’s body flush against his own. “I just said I liked you before I knew you were a dragon, along with the implication that you have a delectable ass.”

“Even though it’s not decorated with beautiful blue swirls of ice crystals?”

“Even though,” Minseok said.

Jongdae gave a very heavy, very fake sigh.

“I guess maybe I’ll believe you eventually, as long as we have a lot of sex.”

“I’ll do my best to convince you,” Minseok laughed.

Especially if convincing took the form of eventually being on his back in Jongdae’s bed again, Jongdae – this improbable being out of legends – crouched over him, adding his own bluish marks to Minseok’s neck.

“Why didn’t I feel your magic before?”

Jongdae lifted his head and scowled.

“I’m sorry, am I not distracting enough?”

Minseok squeezed the lovely ass cheek in his hand and ground up at the pelvis grinding down on him.

“Endlessly. I still want to know, though.”

Jongdae huffed, then settled more comfortably on top of Minseok.

“I was hiding it, of course,” he said. “It’s a big deal for my people to resonate with someone. It’s not just a matter of magic, it’s a choice. I wanted to be totally sure.”

“Until everyone forced your hand.”

Jongdae grimaced.

“Yes.”

Well that was certainly a blind trail that might be suspended over a crevasse.

“Are you sure?”

Jongdae kissed him, deep and slow and sweet, and Minseok felt their magics curl around each other. Minseok saw lightning behind his eyes, and heard a music like distant birdsong. He was breathless when Jongdae lifted his head.

“Why didn’t that happen before?” Minseok gasped.

“I didn’t want you covering my bar in three feet of snow,” Jongdae said.

Minseok hooked one leg over Jongdae’s and flipped them. Jongdae grinned and rolled up against him.

“That’s how it’s going to be, hm?” Minseok growled and nipped that angular chin for good measure. “You playing with my magic like it’s a toy?”

Jongdae trailed fingers down Minseok’s cheek.

“You know it’s not,” he said softly. “Any mystery you want to learn, any feat you want to achieve, I’ll help you, my mage.”

That was a question too big to ponder on a first day after unexpected adventures, with the being in one’s arms different than expected, if still very much wanted.

“What if I want to keep on renewing cold wards and having you make my lunch?”

“Oh, well,” Jongdae said. “That’s fine. But you’ll have to start paying for your meals with flesh.”

Paying with flesh he could do, especially when that meant Jongdae’s clever fingers inside him, Jongdae’s mouth hot against his skin.

“You’re going to make me lazy,” Jongdae said.

Then he gave a deep-voiced, breathy laugh as Minseok sank down onto him, one hand spread on his chest.

After several years, it took a bit before Minseok was ready to move: a highly pleasurable bit, during which he stared down at that laughing face and felt Jongdae’s hands rub up and down his legs, tug at his cock. Jongdae looked so pleased when his pulling made Minseok shift and roll his head.

He looked so beautiful when he bit his lip as Minseok finally lifted up, then dropped back down. Even more than it had in the morning, Minseok’s magic shivered against the vastness that he now saw was Jongdae. He moved, feeling Jongdae slide through him, feeling Jongdae pull at him, feeling Jongdae’s magic all around him, as chill and welcome as the glacier.

“Mage,” Jongdae said, “my Min.”

He tossed his head, and his eyes went reptilian as he grabbed Minseok’s thighs and thrust up, made a sound more like a roar than a groan. Minseok flexed against the pulse he felt inside.

Perhaps he should’ve been more frightened than proud to see how Jongdae’s jaw had lengthened to accommodate a set of sharp black teeth to go with his lantern eyes. But then, Minseok could hear the ringing of Jongdae’s magic against his own. One newly robed ice mage, able to take a dragon apart.

He was extremely glad, however, that Jongdae’s face went back to human before he rolled Minseok over and sucked him down. Oh, there was a thing Minseok hadn’t even permitted himself to think about during his 3 years at the Abbey, and Jongdae’s mouth was as clever as his hands. Jongdae pulled Minseok’s pleasure out of him in very short measure indeed.

“And before you ask,” Jongdae said a bit later, one hand in Minseok’s hair, “this isn’t going to be merely a two-time occurrence, either.”

He grinned wide.

“Dragon-rider.”

Just for that, Minseok made his hands cold and put them onto a sensitive spot. The ensuing shrieks were highly gratifying, even if he did discover immediately afterward that Jongdae could make himself heavy enough to smash even a highly fit mage.

There was none of the awkwardness of new lovers between them, and Jongdae’s teasing never went far enough to cause discomfort. That his jokes were interspersed with lingering kisses and soft fingers against Minseok’s face made Minseok think that Jongdae was just as stunned as he was by all the day’s developments.

“Why me?” he asked later, when the windows showed only darkness and the lamp was burning low, so that Jongdae’s eyes looked like shadows in his sharp-angled face.

Jongdae kissed his cheek.

“Besides the fact that you’re a walking sex fantasy?”

“Besides that,” Minseok said with a pinch to the ass-cheek under his left hand.

What a delicious wriggle that made.

“Your aura is enormous and beautiful,” Jongdae said. “I had heard about you yourself from your friends, but since the minute you stepped down off the mountain, all I heard from every magical being was about the lovely new ice mage with an aura as big and bright as the aurora. All day long, I heard them conspiring, to see who might resonate with you and be safe under your protection.”

Minseok found he had to duck his head and find comfort in Jongdae’s shoulder.

“I’ve swum through the great silence of space and seen the nebulae where stars are born. You shine like a tiny star forge, my mage. By about the second time I spoke to you, I knew I wanted you.”

Minseok huffed and took refuge in complaint.

“You could’ve hinted at it, instead of making me think I was the only single person whom you _didn’t_ want.”

Jongdae tugged at his hair.

“I’ve never wanted to be serious with anybody before, I didn’t know how!”

“You’re barely serious now,” Minseok said.

Minseok thus discovered that Jongdae’s pout was both potent and irresistible. Alas, there had to be more kissing.

Another thing Minseok discovered: not only did dragons sleep – and deeply – but they also hogged the bed. He woke in the morning shoved to the bottom far corner of the mattress, with Jongdae spread out over the center, arms and legs splayed. Jongdae seemed to have a theme of “vexing and adorable.” Minseok found that he didn’t mind the prospect of dealing with it long-term.

Anyway, Jongdae didn’t seem to mind a head being tucked under his arm for another couple of hours of sleep. Both of them minded Yeri’s intrusion at that point, with a tray in her hands and a pair of leering eyes for all the nudity on display. The tray had breakfast on it, at least.

“Why are we drinking tea out of mugs when this place is literally filled with teacups?”

Minseok couldn’t have guessed that his question would cause Jongdae to jump to his feet in the middle of his own bed and retreat toward the wall, arms outspread as if to guard the nearest shelf of teacups.

“You don’t … use … your hoard,” Jongdae said, sounding outraged.

Minseok blinked.

“Your hoard,” he said.

“They’re precious, Minseok! Every one is individual! I can tell if anyone so much as touches any of them, you can’t just put tea in them, that stuff’s acidic! Not to mention all the gross things beings have in their mouths! What if they broke one?”

Minseok blinked some more.

“Like I broke one?”

Jongdae stopped hovering protectively in front of the wall and sat down with a rueful smile.

“Technically, I’m the one who dropped it,” he said. “But you know, that’s the moment when I became truly determined that you’re the one for me. Since I didn’t want to immediately eat your head off your neck, even though you made me lose part of my hoard.”

His smile went a little mushy.

“And then you replaced it with a much better cup, anyway. That thing is so beautiful that I’m taking it with us when we go to the moon.”

Minseok’s eyelids were getting quite the workout this morning.

“We’re going to the moon?”

Jongdae waved one hand.

“Well, not until after I’ve taught you how to not need to breathe. There isn’t any air up there, you know. But you’ll love it, it’s freezing. And I can show you my other hoard!”

“It’s not teacups?”

“Nebulae, no, do you have any idea how dusty the moon is? I’d have to spend all my time polishing, and now that you’re around, I have much better things to do.”

Jongdae winked.

Minseok figured it was a compliment that at least he was more interesting than a piece of porcelain and a rag.

“My other hoard is rocks!” Jongdae said.

“Rocks.”

Jongdae flopped over on his back and put one hand on his bare chest.

“I have _so many_ good rocks,” he groaned. “Min, you won’t believe it, they’re all so great.”

He rolled over on his stomach.

“And you know, teacups are too fragile to get into a really good pile, but rocks! Rocks you can gather up in one spot and lie down on them and touch hundreds of them at one time, ah, it’s great.”

“You know, being held in your claws yesterday seems a little surreal, but this conversation makes it clear that you’re an actual dragon.”

That bottom lip extended again.

“Don’t make fun of my rocks.”

“I’m not making fun of your rocks,” Minseok laughed. “Though I admit I’m a little skeptical that we’re actually going to go to the moon.”

The breakfast tray was a casualty of Jongdae crawling over to lie on top of Minseok and kiss the laugh out of his mouth.

“We’ll do everything,” Jongdae said. “We’ll serve lunch, and perform miracles, and grow frost forests, and make dinner for all our friends, and love, and go to the moon. I’ll teach you how to live as long as you want to as well, and maybe you can stay with me for a really long time.”

Minseok traced his fingers down Jongdae’s face, already imagining how very long that might be.

“Oh, and ride comets through space!” Jongdae said.

Minseok laughed again.

“I’m not sure that sounds like fun,” he said.

“They’re just fast-moving ice,” Jongdae said, “you’ll love it.”

'Fast-moving ice’ indeed.

Minseok figured that he could argue about the ‘fast-moving’ being the problem later. There was a whole list of other things to do first.

Starting, of course, with the loving.


End file.
